The Biggest Ego on Earth

During the months I’ve referred to acting and actors and you probably guessed I know someone who crashed out of the Profession.

This Chap, (who to protect his identity, I’ll call Tall Man) was born into a good family.  He did not do  very well in High School so could only gain acceptance to a community college.  In America there are two year colleges which have much lower requirements than a four year institution.

Many people, such as Tall Man, will enter these colleges, try their best, and then, after satisfying the requirements gain entry to a four year college.

Following this path, after two years he gained entry into a Name Brand College which had a wide program, and he decided to major in ‘Theatre’.

He is quite tall and good looking.   He is also spoiled rotten.

He saw himself as a ‘Shakespearian Actor’, which is where a lot of people get their start.   However, he used it as his way to look down on others even more than he does because of his height.

He had an exotic appearance and his first role was in an ‘independent’ movie, which no one saw and then he was offered a role in a day time soap opera.

He considered appearing in a Soap Opera so far below his skill set as if he were a brain surgeon asked to pierce ears.

Now everyone tried to wake him up.   He was NO BODY.   He needed to get a portfolio and needed to get people to like him,  and use that to gain the attention of major studios so as to gain a position on drama or in a movie.

Everyone told him not to carry his snobbishness with him onto the set.   To be nice, friendly, helpful, and take the role and do his best.

He didn’t listen, not really.

He did well in his first year but his attitude was really bad.   He ridiculed the others, he made many nasty remarks about soap operas being a mere practice for acting and those who spend too much time there admit their lack of ability, and other things which really weren’t necessary.

He spent eighteen months on the Soap, when he could have spent longer, but everyone disliked him so intensely, that his character was killed off.

It didn’t have to go that way, but he didn’t seem to care.   He was virtually unemployed for about two years after that, and somehow got a role in a television serial.   The show came with a lot of hype, his character was well received, and we thought that maybe he’d catch on and be nice; he was an actor, he is supposed to be able to act; so act nice.

Nope.

Within the first season there were already problems with him and the rest of the cast.   We told him to turn it down, he didn’t listen.   His character was popular so he went into the second season.   By this time the set was a near war zone, but somehow they kept it together into the third season, and that was it.

He was let go, claimed he left.   But face it, you don’t voluntarily leave when you have no where to go.  He had no where to go.

He needed a job fast, because his bills were mounting, and actually wound up on another soap for a year. Then disappeared.

Even today, so many years into oblivion he will talk in this superior way to make it seem that he knew more than the producer/director/writer/cast and that his direction should have been followed.

If he had a long list of opportunities one can be selective.  If one is offered roles in various movies and television serials,  then pick and chose.

But he had no choices.

No one was kicking down his door to offer him a role.  People who went to school with him had a lot of bad things to say.  People who were on that first soap bite their tongues to avoid saying what they feel. On that drama, if he had only parked his ego, done his best, he might have gotten other roles.  But Acting is a very personal profession.   If someone says you are ‘hard to work with’ you won’t get many chances to prove that you are or are not.

People who are involved in the acting profession will tell you that the reason you see certain people all the time is because everyone likes them.  People want to work with them.

This is a ‘community’ where ‘everyone knows everyone’ (to an extent) so that when Mr. A says, “Looking for an actress to play a spy…”   while he sits at the bar will provoke, “Oh, why don’t you take a look at …… she’s a real doll, and easy to work with.”

The import thing about Tall Man is that everyone who knows him has become so much more humble and nice so as to use him as an example of what not to be.